All that's left
by Canelaguila
Summary: After the war, Max sees a Germany he can't relate to anymore. He tries to escape German reality by traveling the world. Liesel, who he wants to have a normal life with people from her age after everything that happened to her, is the only person that makes him return to his country every time. But what happens when Liesel doesn't want him to go anymore? Not without her?
1. Chapter 1

**1 **

**~An Important Fact~ **

**Dachau was liberated by American troops the 29th of April, 1945. **

The man lying in the improvised hospital barrack didn't know it till two weeks later. His body lied immobilised on the small, harsh hospital bed and his mind was full of clouds, which made it impossible for him to think or even remember anything. Close as he was to Death, it may be called a miracle he eventually waked up from his endless slumber.

* * *

Those days Death was very busy around the camp. The American had arrived, but all the healthy prisoners had previously been evacuated and all the ones left were either dying or already dead.

** ~A Sad Note~ **

**The last train that ever arrived at Dachau stood still on the train platform. It was loaded with pale corpses with barely flesh, all bones and skin.**

Nurses came after a few days with DDT, a new medicine, but still almost 80 persons died each day of various reasons (typhus being the main one). They gave some medicine to the man who lied in the hospital too, but there were too many sick people for the available DDT. The man (like almost everyone) looked like a hopeless case of typhus anyways.

* * *

It was about a week after the 29th of April that the clouds in his mind began to become less dense. He hadn't thought of anything in weeks and suddenly there it was: a face. Before the machinery of his brain worked well enough to process the face and know who it was, he already knew one thing certain: she was dead.

He didn't have much perception of time, but after a while his brain gave him more information, and then he remembered who she was. His mother. And she was dead.

Slowly, very slowly and without much detail (it all felt like he was watching it through a very dirty window) the memories began to come. They came randomly and without context. It was like his life was told to him through images, but although they were a bit chronologically they made little jumps fore- and backwards in time, making it all a big fuss that most of the time didn't make any sense at all.

Besides the memories he also began to have strange hallucinations of him being conscious enough to hear what people around him were saying, but as the things he heard made no sense to him (about a capitulation and allies), most of the time he supposed they weren't real. One time he saw a strange, dark figure standing over him. The Standoverman…, he thought, but he was too busy looking through his blurry eyes at the figure to think about it more.

'I've seen you like this before' the figure muttered, but it didn't look like the figure, almost a shadow, was talking to him. The shadow was talking to itself. 'I didn't know it that time, but the girl was there with you, and you didn't want to come with me. Now you look like you want to, but no… **A Fact: It isn't your time yet. The colour is not right.**'

The man later concluded that this had been the strangest hallucination of them all.  
But it was also this hallucination that saved eventually him. Standoverman, he thought after the shadow was gone.

The Standoverman. Father. Father, Victor, Führer, Friend… Liesel. Liesel Meminger. The Wordshaker.

And suddenly he saw her face, like he had seen it the last time he saw her, and it was the first clear thought he had had in weeks. It was like the clouds had disappeared and a sunbeam had illuminated his head.

He opened his eyes.

The world around him was full of smoke from the infected blankets that were being burned outside. It was a rainy, cold day and there were still people dying and still far too much people dead.  
But for the first time in 2 years he felt that there was still hope. He still had the Himmelstraße and Walter, people who cared for him. But above everything he had to find Liesel, make sure she was fine.  
And that was the thought with which the man began to pick up the pieces left of his world. A world that had changed drastically in his more than 5 years of absence.

His name was Max Vanderburg.


	2. Chapter 2

**2**

They told him what they could.

Soldiers talked with him about battles that had led to the capitulation, a few officers with time tried to explain him what was happening with Germany now.  
None of it made sense after 2 years of not knowing anything about what happened outside the camp.

* * *

He was improving fast. In less than three days he was able to walk around the camp and see everything that was left of it: the houses of the high officers, the gassing rooms, the places where he once used to work but also the part of Dachau were he had never been, the part were people had been imprisoned less time and were treated better.  
They looked quite healthy.

But there was also the Dachau were he had lived, the Dachau were hundreds of corpses were buried at the same time, because there wasn't enough space or time to give them all their own grave. Those corpses, which made it very difficult to believe that they had once been normal people having normal lives, were the ones that would later appear in his nightmares.

Max' whole stay at Dachau had been like a nightmare becoming everyday reality.

To see the camp with the Americans walking through it felt like someone was showing him how useless it all had been. Their presence made him see the two most wasted years of his life through the eyes of someone who hadn't lived them.  
And all the suffering had had no point at all but to fulfil the sick ideas of one single man.  
A man that had passed those ideas to other people through words.

Now that that man was gone, the Jewish fistfighter didn't feel like he had won. In fact, everybody had lost.

* * *

Max found a high officer who was headed with some trucks to the west of Germany, and Max somehow persuaded him to take him with them. No people were allowed to enter the camp without permission, but you could always leave.

It had been quite different a few weeks earlier.

**~Max' first thought about Stuttgart~**

**This isn't Stuttgart.**

He walked through the streets for hours. Some were bombed.

Some were just as he used to remember, but still different.

They weren't the streets of his youth. All those memories had been replaced by the ones of the city after the Kristallnacht, and that wasn't the Stuttgart he liked to remember.

* * *

After a long walk he ended up in the neighbourhood were had grown up. There wasn't much left of it. The old house that had once been his uncle's was still there, miraculously, but other people lived there and he didn't have the courage to ask what had happened to his family.

He continued walking. After a while he found himself in front of the ruins of what once had been a house he had known very well.

Before the ruin stood a car. A cheap model, but still, a car.

Behind the car was a man searching in the scrums for something. He had his back turned to Max.

Next to the car sat a woman with a kerchief bound around her head. She had a baby in her arms.

'Sst' she whispered to the little child. 'Sst Max, don't cry please, don't cry Max…'

The other Max stood still and watched the scene, motionless, till the man standing in the rubble turned around and saw him.

A tear fell down his dusty cheek as he watched Max standing there.

**~An understandable assumption~**

**Walter Kugler hadn't thought he'd ever see his friend again.**

'Max… You named him Max' was the only thing Max was able to say after a long silence.

Walter nodded slowly.

'I wanted at least one Max to survive the war, after… After Hans told me that you had left, and…' He fell silent.

'Looks like it's a lucky name' Max answered with a broken voice, looking at the blonde haired, typical German child.

* * *

They embraced.

Walter began asking questions. He wanted to know everything that had happened since his friend had disappeared in to the night with "Mein Kampf", but Max just shook his head. He wasn't ready yet.

So Walter began talking about himself.

He told his friend how his business had made a surprising amount of money in the first years of the war making cars and tanks, what had made him a quite healthy man. He explained that his wife, Andrea, was born on the countryside, and that they fled to the village of her parents when the bombing of Stuttgart began and she discovered she was pregnant. A few weeks after their run their house was bombed, as Max could see, and now that the war was over they had come back to save what could be saved and then leave the country.

It was all a big coincidence that Max had arrived the day that the small family was there too.   


'Did your wife agree on naming your child after a Jew?' Max asked after a while, looking at the woman with the baby in her arms.

'My parents had Jews in their stables from the beginning of the war. My so-called "nephews" from the city who stayed with us were all Jews. What kind of daughter would I be if I didn't?' Andrea answered, instead of her husband.

Max managed to show a sad smile. Andrea and Walter smiled back.

Little Max began to cry.

'We could take you with us' Walter said. 'We're going to America, and if that doesn't work out we can always find another place to go. The world is big, you know.'

Max nodded.

'Thank you' he said after a short silence. 'But there are still things I have to do here. Hans Hubermann..., he has a daughter. I want them to know I'm alright. They took care of me for so long... So did you, Walter. I wouldn't be here without all of you.'

Walter smiled and nodded.

'And...' Max continued hesitantly, 'I don't have much hope. But I want to at least try to find what's left of my family.

'Take care of yourself Max' Walter said. 'People don't change this fast. Hitler may be gone, but it will take some time till everything is normal again. Can we at least bring you somewhere?'

'Walter, really... You've done enough for me.'

'Max.'

'Fine... Münich. Münich would be great.


	3. Chapter 3

**3**

'I don't know how far I'll be able to get you, the city is a mess.'

Max, who had been watching the dashboard with a blank expression, turned around to look at his friend.

'What do you mean, a mess?'

'Well, first the Americans and other allies bombed the city a few times, making the city into a chaos. And I suppose they'll try to rebuild the city now. At least, that's what's happening in Stuttgart.'

'Which parts of the city were bombed?' Max asked. 'The outskirts?' He slowly began to feel worried. Compared to all the things he had been through, he had always considered the Himmelstraße to be quite safe. He had been out of the normal world for more than 6 years now and had probably lost his whole family in the concentration camps. Wouldn't it be too much if he lost the people from Himmelstraße too?

'I don't know, Max. I haven't been in Munich during the war.'

Max nodded and began watching the landscape, hoping to see a glimpse of Munich.

'Walter, can't you miss a few clothes?' Andrea asked suddenly. 'Look at your friend, he can't present himself at the house of people who took care of him for so long wearing some... Garbage. Where did you get those clothes?'

'The Americans gave them to me...' Max muttered looking at his scratchy clothes.

'I am sure Walter can miss something. Isn't it, my dear?'

'Yeah, sure' Walter shrugged.

'And when was the last time you shaved yourself?' Andrea continued.

'Euhm... After I woke up, but that's a few weeks ago...'

'Let's stop at a farm' Andrea suggested. 'We can't go on for hours, dear, with Max and everything.'

'I'm fine madam' Max said quickly.

'I meant the other Max'

Walter smiled apologetically and nodded.

'I'll see if I find a good place to rest.'

Max would have preferred to continue the journey, but he owed Walter and Andrea so much already that he just didn't dare to say anything. Who was he, after all? A homeless jew with no family, no money and, he tought as he watched one farmer after the next refusing to receive them, no country.

'Don't you see I have a wife and a baby?' Walter exclaimed when the last farmer slowly shook his head.

'Sure' the farmer answered indifferently. 'But you also have a man sitting there looking like the Führer hasn't been very kind to him the last few years.'

'The führer is dead, we lost' Walter snapped at him.

'But my neighbors are not' the farmer replied. 'Shit happens and then you die, sir. Heil Hitler.'

And he closed the door.

'We didn't want to stay here' Walter said while entering the car again. 'Let's find a nice picnic place somewhere.'

'I remember when I was a little girl, my brother and I used to cycle across the countryside and stop at different farms to get some eggs and bacon leftovers...' Andrea mused. 'Some farmers even invited us to dinner! What has happened to our Germany...?'

**~What had happened to Germany~**

**It was red, black and white.**

* * *

Max almost cried when he entered the clearing in the woods where they would rest. The grass, the trees, the small stream, and, most of all, the colors. Dachau had been brown and grey. The forest was a mixture of different shades of green, blue and yellow.  
He ignored the brown colors.

'Am I awake?' he asked with a cautious smile.

Walter sat down next to him while Andrea took care of small Max.

Instead of answering the question, he asked another question: 'How long has it been since you read a book?'

Max looked down at his friend, an image of a girl reading a book slipping through his mind.

'Too long' he replied. 'Too long.'

**~Note~**

**It had been more than two years since Max read a book.**

**AN: Next chapter they'll meet, I promise! :D I wanted them to meet this chapter, but then I felt the need to have someone say "shit happens and then you die" (something my English teacher always says) so yeah. I'm sorry. Also, this is my first story/fanfiction in English. I'm 16 years old and although I have two nationalities, English is not one of them (not sure if Spanish is a very good recommendation for writing in English either... lo siento :p). If you see any mistakes please tell me, I could learn from it! :) And yeah, I feel very cliche, but I really do appreciate comments... I fangirl almost as much over them as I do over the Max/Liesel chapters in the Book Thief...**


End file.
